Photographing War in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario puts her life on the line to photograph conflict around the world, providing a snapshot into both the devastating impact of war and the celebrations of victory.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.

I think of the people who live in these situations all the time as being really courageous because they have to be there. As a journalist at that time it was a great privilege to have access to so many different sides of the story. Our job was simply to document what we could. And this is one of the examples of when it's very uncomfortable to be a journalist because I have to photograph people that I don't necessarily agree with their philosophy but this is part of the story and is important for me to tell the story.

In 2001 after September 11th, I offered to go photograph the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar. These are some of the first days after the Taliban fell in Kandahar and it was the last main city that the Taliban fell. This is at Mullah Omar's house the spiritual leader of the Taliban. And this is the first time they played music on the streets in Kandahar. Music had been illegal, any form of entertainment was illegal under the Taliban. This is a man who had been imprisoned so long he didn't even know the Taliban had come and gone. This is the Kandahar airport when the Taliban fell and this is completely developed everything looks very different now.

In 2003 I knew that we were gearing up for the war in Iraq everyone knew, and I wanted to be there. This is one of the first scenes I saw. The US troops were backing the Kurdish Peshmerga and they were fighting Al-Ansar which was a terrorist group in the mountains bordering Iran. And there were funerals of Peshmerga all throughout Northern Iraq. These are some of the first funerals I had witnessed. I was very surprised at how openly emotional men were, especially fighters. And these are some bodies of Al-Ansar fighters. And right after Saddam Hussein fell in early April we were some of the first journalists to enter the offices of Saddam. And it was incredible because they had freshly been fled and there were pictures of the leader all over and people were euphoric. They were defacing pictures of him all over. People were pulling Americans out of their Humvees throwing American flags at them, kissing them. And this is outside of one of Saddam's palaces. So, people were really euphoric. It was the first time they had gotten access to these palaces Saddam had... had taken all the territory for himself. He had made these man-made lakes for himself and there was no water anywhere else in the country. So, people, as a form of rebellion would come and swim in Saddam's lakes go into his palaces, they were looting everything. But very quickly the horrors of the war became unveiled.

This is a mass grave south of Baghdad in Hilla. And what you see here are all bodies of Shiites who were massacred under Saddam. Each family would come and try and recognize their loved ones in the sheets whether there were shards of clothing that remained. And there was no plan for the aftermath of Saddam. People were incredibly frustrated because there was no water, no electricity. This is at a propane distribution. So, people there cook with propane the women come to fill their tanks that's something that routinely would happen under Saddam. And when the Americans came in there was no system for that. And so, women would come and line up for hours under the hot sun. One day I was there and I was watching people get more and more frustrated because there was no propane. And suddenly I saw this happen, right before my eyes. And the soldiers took this guy and they started beating him up. And an old Iraqi woman came and banged one of the soldiers over the head with her propane tank. I couldn't believe it and then, of course this is what happened and they stopped me from shooting. And I don't know whatever happened to that guy. And so, chaos ensued at a certain point the insurgency started and it was chaotic all over Baghdad. So that euphoria transitioned very quickly.

I wanted to see what the soldiers thought so I started doing my first military embeds with the military. And we would go in in the middle of the night into areas throughout the Sunni triangle and watch as they rounded up men, and families were put aside often women and children were put aside and they would round up the men put bags over their heads. We had access to the embeds, they didn't try to hide anything from us, it was very open. And then we wanted to see what the militia the Sadr militia looked like. As a journalist at that time it was a great privilege to have access to so many different sides of the story. Our job was simply to document what we could.

In 2004, I got a call from LIFE magazine. They said “we have this incredible assignment for you. It's to photograph the wounded coming out of Fallujah.” When we flew in this is one of the first scenes I saw. This is on my birthday in 2004 and it was during the Battle of Fallujah. And there were so many wounded Americans coming out of Fallujah that they cleared out the inside of a C-17 cargo aircraft and put all the wounded on the ground. And this is how they flew them to Germany for treatment. And this is a young man who was wounded in Fallujah and that's how he was being flown to Germany. And this is from an IED attack. I spent five days on the ground and when I got back from the assignment, I called and I said “You know, I think these pictures are really going to change the tide against the war. The public is gonna see them and turn against the war, for sure.” LIFE magazine asked me to send the pictures, I sent them and that was in November of 2004. And through November, December, January, February they held the pictures and never published them. And finally in February I got an email from my photo editor saying, “I hate to tell you this but we will never publish your pictures of wounded American soldiers because we don't think the American public can handle seeing them.” I was frustrated and angry, and so I at that point as a freelancer, I can then try and sell the pictures to someone else. I called my editor at the New York Times magazine, Kathy Ryan, and she was able to get them in the next issue of New York Times magazine.

In 2004, I started covering Darfur. The Sudanese government did not want journalists there. Often during a civil war it's very difficult to get in. We had to sneak in through neighboring Chad. So, we went to Chad and had to walk about a mile to meet the Sudanese Liberation Army rebels. These are burned villages. And there were bodies throughout the desert and displaced people. These are people who were freshly running from their villages trying to make it to Chad. We watched people suffering from malnutrition, measles, malaria. And it was the first time that I met women who admitted to being raped, and this was sort of the first time I was exposed to rape as a weapon of war. And that was in Darfur, and I remember thinking how brave these women are to talk so openly about what they had been through. The government was bombing villages from above. This was very difficult to get access to. And this image was six columns across the front page of the New York Times. And it really, really showed the power of an image. And these are some of the displaced from that village. So, I covered Darfur for six straight years.

This is in 2006, we had heard that there was a massacre of Sudanese government soldiers. President Bashir went on TV and on the news and he said absolutely no government soldiers have been killed these journalists are lying. And so we went to the border, we were in Chad and we went to the border and said “We need to go in and see the massacre.” And the rebels said, “Look, it's very dangerous. There are Antonov aircrafts flying overhead. And if you wanna come in, the Antonov's might bomb you because the government doesn't want people there.” And we said, “Well, look, it's the New York Times we need to report on it, so take us in.” So they did. As we got closer there were bodies clear across the desert. And again, to me this is really proof this is the power of an image because President Bashir could not say anything he couldn't deny that his soldiers had been killed.

In 2007, I was working with Elizabeth Rubin for the New York Times magazine, and we wanted to know why there were so many civilian casualties in Afghanistan and why we couldn't win the war there. We had the best technology in the world and so... This is one of the first scenes, this is in the Tactical Operations Center. At the time of the war I could not publish any image like this but they are now, the war is over in this part, so I'm allowed to show these images. But what you are looking at are drone feeds heat sensor feeds, maps. They knew that there were troops in contact they were pinned down for several hours and finally the commander, Colonel Oslin who you see up in the front, made a decision to drop a bomb. This is them actually dropping the bomb. We stayed for two months in the Korengal Valley and every day we went on patrols like this. It was 7,000 feet through the mountains in incredibly hostile villages. We were mortared and shot at almost every day. And this is when we're under attack at the Korengal outpost. At the end of the operation we were airlifted on to the side of the mountain for Operation Rock Avalanche. We wanted to go into the heart of the insurgency so that the military could draw out the Taliban and we could then attack them. It was the first time they had gone to this area. We jumped out of Black Hawks in the middle of the night on to the side of a mountain. Everyone had night vision goggles. As a photographer I get incredibly frustrated if I can't see. Everything is through night vision and you can't see at a distance. As soon as we jumped out we heard that the Taliban was approaching us, and so we stopped and the commander started calling in airstrikes. I'm sitting here listening to the correspondence it's unbelievable, it's incredibly tense but there's nothing for me to photograph. So, I sit down on the side of the mountain and I fall asleep. About an hour later I hear “Addario, wake up, we're sparkling.” And I thought, “What?”, so I wake up and I put my night vision on, and this is what I see. And what you're looking at is a JTAC who works with the air force, and he's sparkling a target for the AC-130 aircraft above. He's basically showing him where to drop a bomb. And that is only visible through night vision goggles. And then I fell back asleep. This is where we slept for the first three nights in this ditch. And on the sixth day we were ambushed by the Taliban and three soldiers were shot and Sergeant Rougle was killed. And this is what we all looked like at the end of the week.

A year later I wanted to go meet the Taliban. I got a call from Dexter Filkins who worked with the New York Times and we had worked together for almost a decade at that time. And I remember my husband who was then my boyfriend at the time, he looked at me and said, “You're not going to meet the Taliban.” And I said, “No, absolutely not. “So, Dexter went ahead and flew in and he spent at least a month trying to set up access for us. He had two translators, and in these situations the fixers, translators, who are often local journalists do most of the work for us. I flew in to Islamabad and drove up to Peshawar which is at the border. And the night before we're supposed to leave Haji Inamdar, who was the commander of the Taliban he called our translator, Halim, and he said Okay, you are welcome to come tomorrow but the one thing you cannot do is bring a woman. So, Dexter and I looked at each other and said “Well, we're going.” And so, Halim said, “I don't know what can we do. He said don't bring a woman.” And then he said, “I know. No Taliban would leave his wife at home in a strange village. So you must come, you are Dexter's wife.” We said, “Okay, fine. We're husband and wife.” So, we get all dressed up, I'm fully veiled, head to toe. We get in the car and drive to meet Haji Inamdar. When we get there Dexter and Halim get out of the car they go into the house, they call for me to come in. I come in and it's a very small room full of Taliban fighters. And I'm fully veiled, so I'm trying to see through my veil and very awkward being a woman in this situation because women never leave their houses in these villages. And so, I go and I sit down next to Dexter, like his wife and he says, “Haji Inamdar, thanks, thanks so much. And you know, this is my wife and you know, my wife has a camera do you mind if she takes a few pictures?” I can't believe he's going to believe that. So, I start taking some pictures. This series was part of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Here's a guy who said he crossed the border into Afghanistan to go kill Americans. And this is one of the examples of when it's very uncomfortable to be a journalist, because I have to photograph people that I don't necessarily agree with their philosophy but this is part of the story and is important for me to tell the story.

And I'll just show you a few pictures of me on assignment. This is me in Pakistan and in Iraq. Fallujah. Crossing into Darfur. Darfur. Afghanistan. Korengal Valley. Afghanistan. And this was recently during the elections. That's seven months pregnant in Gaza. Libya. And my family. And that's it.

Photographing War in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Darfur

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario puts her life on the line to photograph conflict around the world, providing a snapshot into both the devastating impact of war and the celebrations of victory.

The National Geographic Live series brings thought-provoking presentations by today’s leading explorers, scientists, photographers, and performing artists right to you. Each presentation is filmed in front of a live audience at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C. New clips air every Monday.